Michael Taussig is what you might call a “gonzo anthropologist” — he writes heavily “novelized” (not necessarily to say “fictionalized”) ethnographies that deal primarily with the intersection between capitalism and terror. His latest book, My Cocaine Museum, posits a Colombian museum that would explore the role of cocaine in Colombian history the way that the already-existing Gold Museum does for mining. An excerpt of the book is available at the University of Chicago’s website.
Speaking of Indians, here’s a familiar figure to greet you, that huge photo you see in the airport as you walk to immigration of a stoic Indian lady seated on the ground in the marketplace with limestone and coca leaves for sale and in front of her, of all things, William Burroughs’s refrigerator from Lawrence, Kansas, with a sign on its door, Just Say No, as an Indian teenager saunters past with a Nike sign on his chest saying Just Do It and a smiling Nancy Reagan floats overhead like the Cheshire cat gazing thoughtfully at an automobile with the trunk open and two corpses stuffed inside it with their hands tied behind their backs and neat bullet holes, one each through the right temple and one each through the crown of the head.
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Interesting article on homosexuality in the Navajo community. Indian societies have long posed a challenge to Western notions of fixed sex and gender identities. Many have a long history of tolerating, and often holding in high regard, people who choose at some point in their life (usually puberty) to take on the role and identity of the opposite sex. As the article notes, these people frequently married members of the once-same, now-opposite sex, and their marriages were considered as normal and natural as any other marriage. Once referred to generically as “berdaches”, the preferred term these days, from Will Roscoe‘s work on Zuni and other socities, the accepted term nowadays is “two-spirits“. The particular term for two-spirits in Navajo is nadleeh
Western conceptions of gender don’t apply very readily to two-spirits, and it is difficult to apply the term “homosexual” to them without reservations. But, of course, Navajos don’t live in pre-contact Navajo society, they live in a modern Navajo society which has developed for centuries in relation to a conquering Western society. Homosexuality in Western society is a mark of difference, a transgression of the categories we rely on to make sense of human relations. It is also closely related to the modern, Western sense of the self as an individual, driven by private pleasures and passions. Sexuality in Western society is more than a social role, it’s a function of identity, and so the Navajo have experienced the emergence of “gay” identities that don’t quite fit the mold of the nadleeh, yet aren’t quite the same as Western homosexuality, either.
Now gay Navajos are organizing, under pressure from both HIV/AIDS and a social scene, Navajo and Western, that doesn’t quite know where to place this new breed of nadleeh. It would be interesting to know the particular experiences Navajos have in dealing with these pressures, and their responses to those experiences. [Continue reading]
I wasn’t going to write about the new Matrix film here. I’ve been posting comments to some of the discussions of the film around the blogosphere, but didn’t feel I had enough to say to make it worth a post of my own. But it’s a funny thing–certain ideas kept reprocessing, some of my earlier sureties about the movie have come under question, and I find myself admiring the movie a lot more today than I did when I saw it 10 days ago. And then I read William Blaze’s take on the political implications of Matrix: Reloaded (via Doc Searls), and it all clicked together. So, for better or worse, here are my thoughts (or a selection of them, anyway) on the Matrix. [Continue reading]
Eyeteeth has a great interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library (which is now at the top of my “to-read” list). Vaidhyanathan discusses the ways that sharing networks–be they local communities like church groups or jam sessions or transnational structures like the Internet of global corporations–work as the medium for cultural growth and development. [Continue reading]
Less Liberty and Justice for All
According to USA Today, the Justice Department is pushing for legislation to extend their DNA database to include not only convicted criminals but also juvenile offenders and even non-convicted arrestees. This means that if you are accused of a crime–even if you are completely innocent–a record of your DNA will be kept by the Justice Department, along with your fingerprints and other personal information. The DoJ is comparing it to fingerprinting, but I think this is a false analogy–DNA extraction is both more invasive than fingerprinting and more telling. A fingerprint is only really useful in establishing your presence at the scene of the crime, and maybe your contact with a weapon or lock combination or other material evidence. DNA can be used to identify carriers of certain diseases and regressive traits, to build a rough physiological profile of a person, to establish ancestry to a degree, to establish paternity and maternity, and so on. Not only could such information be dangerous in the hands of less-than-scrupulous government agents, but it could be even more dangerous in the hands of persons who obtain illicit access to the DoJ’s databases–and somebody will, if a good enough use for that information is discovered.
If passed, this invasion of privacy will apply not only to people who have actually committed crimes, but to people who have not. The whole idea behind the juvenile justice system is that minors are not responsible for their own actions, can not evaluate the consequences of their actions, and may, under the right conditions, still be capable of becoming productive and law-abiding adults. Adding them to the DoJ’s DNA database is a tacit rejection of those ideas. It reflects the assumption that people who commit crimes as youngsters will continue to commit crimes as adults, regardless of time they spend in rehabilitiation facilities. The implications of including innocents are even more disturbing, reflecting the sort of “you may be innocent of this crime, but the fact that you were arrested means you must be guilty of something” mentality that is growing ever more pervasive in today’s America. The fact that you were arrested is taken by the DoJ as proof enough that you are likely to be involved in future crimes.
Given the free reign which the War on Terrorism, especially, has given to law enforcement, it would not be surprising if within a very short time, all Americans have been indexed in the DoJ’s DNA database. If DNA recording is made the status quo for arrestees, why not make require it for everyone who appears in court, or everyone who applies for American citizenship, or everyone who uses federal social services? I’m not trying to make a “slippery slope” argument–it might be possible to manage to get everyone arrested, at least once, just under existing laws. Even law-abiding citizens like Mike Hawash can be arrested under our current anti-terrorism laws–why not you? Or me? The DoJ’s terrorist watch list includes 13 million people–many of which are non-citizens and foreign nationals, but the sheer number of potential suspects for just terrorism-related crimes is an indication of the kind of scale the DoJ is willing to consider for keeping an eye on potential criminals. The DoJ is clearly willing to think big, and that scares me. It should scare everyone.
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Common Voices
Common Dreams is a great website, bringing together dozens, maybe hundreds of liberal-to-radical voices to address the critical issues of the day. Recently, they ran a great piece by Howard Zinn calling for a new take on patriotism, a patriotism that recognizes the common humanity–and the common suffering–of people everywhere, instead of the ephemera of nation, tribe, and government.
We need to expand [our notion of patriotism] beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade – we call it globalization – should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?
Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways.
They are also carrying a transcript of a speech Tim Robbins gave on “baseball and show business”–and, not coincidentally, democracy.
For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children’s terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.
I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can’t, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.
Of course, America has no leaders worthy of the name, at least not in office, and within days of 9/11–within hours–the military machine was already in motion, and what we got instead of hope and a renewal of purpose was this Eternal Retribution, this hirsute bow-legged cock-swinging that seems likely to become the status quo for the foreseeable future.
Zinn and Robbins speak to the best human nature has to offer. There have been times in the last 20 months when I’ve been literally on the edge, seething with frustration and rage and impotence and fear and uncertainty and loathing and contempt, and it their example and the examples of so many people like them that has kept me not only sane but hopeful.
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The Rapture of Colin Powell
After appearing to have finally come into lockstep with the rest of the administration in the build-up to the war in Iraq, Powell seems to be breaking away again. In an interesting development–especially in the context of on-going investigations of Kissinger as America’s representative in the coup–he told a student recently that America’s role in the Chilean coup that brought Pinochet to power in 1973 “is not a part of American history that we’re proud of.” His own State Department flew into CYA mode, issuing a statement that America had no involvement in the coup. Seems like Powell can barely open his mouth in this administration without being contradicted. I only hope that once Powell is out of the administration, whether because he resigns or because Bush falls out (or is thrown out) of office or because he is not asked to repeat his role in the second Bush administration, that Powell will spill his guts, loudly and thoroughly. I also hope that by the time he does, the deregulated media that his clan has played a big role in creating will give him a strong platform to speak from.
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A New Look at What’s Normal
Wired has an article on well curves, curves whose distributions are weighted towards the left and right ends instead of towards the center like a “normal distribution” or bell curve.
[A] surprising number of economic and social phenomena now seem to follow… the well curve.
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Large companies… are becoming gargantuan enterprises…. Meantime, small enterprises are also proliferating…. Yet while the big grow bigger and the small multiply, midsize enterprises are waning. The pattern is similar in geopolitics. The past decade saw the rise of both huge multinational federations (Nafta, the European Union) and tiny secessionist movements and small independent states. But the political entities in the middle – countries such as Italy and Spain, for example – are on the unprecedented brink of losing population.
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High-end luxury hotels and low-end budget chains are doing well – but at the expense of midprice accommodations. In retail, Wal-Mart is soaring, boutiques are thriving, but middlebrow Sears is struggling. As The Wall Street Journal noted last year, “consumers are flocking to the most expensive products and the cheapest products, fleeing the middle ground in between.”
Then there’s the drooping middle class. The Federal Reserve Board’s latest analysis of family finances showed that from 1998 to 2001, American incomes were up across the board. But when economists divided the population into five equal segments, a well curve emerged. “Incomes grew at different rates in different parts of the income distribution,” the Fed reported, “with faster growth at the top and bottom ranges than in the middle.”
Other examples range from the size of screen in consumer electronics (an increasing number of small screens on PDAs and well-phones and of large screens like the 45″ plasma screens and HDTVs) to standardized test scores (a large number of students score very well or very poorly, with fewer scoring just “average”). The implications of this might turn out to be quite significant. Bell curves are what we think of as “normal” (in the real-world, not just the statistical sense), with most people being more or less average and a small number of people at the ends of the distribution being “deviant” in some way. These well-shaped distibutions suggest that we are in a period of divergence, that there are developing normativities that are at odds with each other, perhaps even struggling against one another. It is too easy to read this as a single polarization of society–the widening gap and clearer differentiation between rich and poor may or may not be related to the widening gap between high and low scores on standardized tests, for instance–but it does show a need to begin to reassess our concept of “normal”, as well as our society as a whole.
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Everybody’s favorite lefty cowboy has an impressive analysis of where the Peace Movement, and the Left in general, is at right now, how we got here, and where we might be going, over at the Reach’m High Cowboy Network Noose. As Cowboy Kahlil sees it:
The Left has three missions ahead: preventing the war with Syria, stopping Patriot Act 2 and preventing Bush’s re-election. All three are negatives though, reactions, not pro-actions. Is the Left capable of defining its own agenda in positive terms anymore? No, but I hope it’ll rebuild its capacity to do so.
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More on Moore
Michael Moore’s latest project, entitled “Fahrenheit 911”, explores the relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families, apparently going back two generations. In an ironic twist, after a competitive bidding project, Moore secured a pretty lucrative contract from Republican Mel Gibson’s production company, Icon Productions. Moore’s success in getting the very people he attacks–staunch Republicans, publishing companies, etc.–to back his work is interesting; I’d like to think that his backers are expressing a democratic ideal of open access and funding work based on its quality, not its ideology, but I think it probably has more to do with the money to be made from a controversial best seller and maker of incredibly profitable (and cheap) documentaries. Whatever the reason, I’m glad to see Moore back in the studio.
But I worry about this new project. Moore seems to be at his best when tracking nebulous ideas through their possible permutations, rather than when attacking a particular person or organization. “Roger and Me” succeeded not because of its portrayal of Roger Smith, GM’s president, but because it attacked the much more difficult topic of profitability versus responsibility, of corporate ethics versus community. The weakest point of the otherwise brilliant “Bowling for Columbine” was, in my opinion, Moore’s attack on K-Mart, not because they didn’t deserve it, and not because it wasn’t interesting to watch K-Mart PR flacks deal with their own corporate hypocrasy, but because it worked directly against the rest of the movie’s strengths. Moore’s examination of the roots of violence in America suggested that just having guns didn’t make people more likely to kill each other, that there was something deeper in our national identity that promoted violence as a useful and meaningful reaction to adversity and fear. Now, I support tighter gun control laws, but it’s not a position that is supported by Moore’s film, and so the protest at K-Mart seemed more like an easy media trick than a part of the unfolding narrative.
Now Moore is proposing a film that is composed entirely of a localized attack on one person (or, rather, on one family), which doesn’t seem like it will leave a lot of space for the cultural, social, and political factors that have fed into American foreign policy for decades, that fuel American anti-Islamic sentiments, that have allowed us to view government as a set of business relationships. These complexes date far earlier than any Bush’s worldly power, and are far more far-reaching than that of even a White House occupant’s power.
Of course, I don’t know what Moore is planning–after all, he did manage to look at a pretty wide swath of the American cultural landscape through the small lens of the Columbine shootings. But I fear that Moore is allowing himself the luxury of partisanship, of targeting and taking down a personal enemy, instead of exploring and explaining the political landscape at large, which he does so well.
As long as I’m on the topic, I want to discuss Moore’s ample girth. Fighting Nation writes:
Hey Michael Moore, I challenge you to drop your tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken, your bag of White Castle Burgers, your 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew, your box of Twinkies and your bag of Doritos and run a mile to protest the war. I bet it can’t be done! You fat windbag.
It’s common to see rightists describe Moore as “fat” but it’s not very rare to see even lefties doing so. The implication is that Moore pretends to represent the poor working class and to care about starving children and such, but he’s fat, you know, so how much solidarity can he really feel with the hungry masses? The thing is, poor people are fat, and getting fatter. Go into any K-Mart (on your way to the gun section, perhaps) and visit the large, clearly marked “Big Men’s” section. You’ll notice that it’s just about as big as it’s “normal” men’s section. Now, K-Mart’s clientele are fairly diverse, but one group is distinctly absent from its demographic, and that’s the rich. Check out Fat Land and Fast Food Nation for the inside skinny (sorry, I couldn’t resist) on how fat has become America’s calorie of choice, particularly among the working classes. Moore may have his share of faults, as a person and as a documentarian, but as far as I can tell there is nothing about his size that interferes with his ability to do the work at which he excels.
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